sophistication
Americannoun
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sophistications
plural
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sophisticated character, ideas, tastes, or ways as the result of education, worldly experience, etc..
the sophistication of the wealthy.
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change from the natural character or simplicity, or the resulting condition.
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complexity, as in design or organization.
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impairment or debasement, as of purity or genuineness.
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the use of sophistry; a sophism, quibble, or fallacious argument.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of sophistication
First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English, from Medieval Latin sophisticātiōn-, stem of sophisticātiō; equivalent to sophisticate + -ion
Explanation
Sophistication is the quality that belongs to a person who appears wise and glamorous. Sipping tea and appreciating opera are both stereotypical signs of sophistication. The noun sophistication can also be used in a slightly different way, to describe a deep understanding, or an almost enlightened state. Before the 1800s, sophistication meant "the use of sophistry," or using mistaken or deceitful arguments, although the root word for both sophistication and "sophistry" is the Greek sophistes, or "wise man."
Vocabulary lists containing sophistication
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
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I Was Their American Dream
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Content Summary 4.7: Early Modern Western Society and Culture
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
In college, my worldly roommate, her Exeter sophistication lapping my sheltered convent education, introduced me to the saccharin-infused Pepsi Light.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 6, 2026
"It showed a level of market sophistication that almost no other issuer has," Kerr said of the Cursor acquisition.
From BBC ● Jul. 13, 2026
In other words, retail investors lack the size and sophistication of institutional investors and are likely to trade more frequently, chasing the next big trends without paying close attention to valuations.
From Barron's ● Jun. 11, 2026
The combination of thematic sincerity and confident visual sophistication makes for a strangely disarming, almost lyrical experience, closer to a poem than a film — a feeling amplified by the movie’s brisk length.
From Salon ● Jun. 2, 2026
I have tried often to search behind the sophistication of years for the enchantment I so easily found in those gifts.
From "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou
“It is as if she had returned from some noble-nonsense war movie of the 1940’s to suggest an area of human response that the masterly sophistications of ‘M.A.S.H.’ are unaware of.”
From Washington Post ● Feb. 25, 2022
“It was so long that its sophistications were less visible,” she said, laughing, and added that she initially resisted suggested cuts.
From New York Times ● Feb. 19, 2012
Another 400 years and the parfit gentil knights in the pious allegories of Alfred Lord Tennyson startlingly resembled iron-padded Victorian cricketers, later followed by Mark Twain's slapstick farce and the droll sophistications of John Erskine.
From Time Magazine Archive
In the Domain, a modern enclave built by the President for useful foreigners and technocrats, Salim is introduced to the casual sophistications of the Big Man's white men and the records of Joan Baez.
From Time Magazine Archive
But her own character and condition overcome all sophistications of this sort: her shape, fortified by the mop and scrubbing-brush, will make its way; and exercise keeps her healthy and cheerful.
From A Century of English Essays An Anthology Ranging from Caxton to R. L. Stevenson & the Writers of Our Own Time by Ernest Rhys
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
